Aurora Theatre Company Calls for Global Age Project Submissions, Now thru 7/31

Berkeley's acclaimed Aurora Theatre Company has announced a call for submissions for its eighth season of the Global Age Project (GAP) festival of new works. The company will choose four new plays to be presented as staged readings with professional directors and actors during the GAP festival in February of 2013; the festival will coincide with the company's fully-staged World Premiere of Anthony Clarvoe's OUR PRACTICAL HEAVEN, directed by Allen McKelvey, the third Aurora main stage production to develop from the GAP. Each of the four finalists will receive a $1,000 award and their work will be considered for further development and production during Aurora Theatre Company's regular season; out of town artists will receive travel and accommodation expenses. The submission period opens today, May 22; deadline for play submission is July 31, 2012. Finalists will be announced in early December 2012.

Aurora Theatre Company is excited to offer online script submission for the GAP. Playwrights may upload their submissions directly to Aurora Theatre Company's website at www.auroratheatre.org; there is a $20 submission fee per play manuscript.

The Global Age Project is a discovery and developmental vehicle established to encourage playwrights to address life in the 21st century and beyond. Seeking forward-thinking unproduced work from both established and emerging playwrights, the festival celebrates the diversity of perspectives, styles, voices, concerns, and stories that make up the world today and provides a development opportunity for plays that directly respond to our complicated present and our possible future. Writers are encouraged to submit works that explore and/or examine the changing state of human relationships in this new century; plays need not be about science or technology. The company also encourages submissions that transcend traditional forms of theater presentation. Plays that are set in a historical time period prior to the year 2000 will not be considered.

"I am pleased to welcome back M. Graham Smith this year as our GAP Producer, and Deborah Taylor as his Associate Producer. Their continued passion and focus is an inspiration to us all," said Aurora Theatre Company Artistic Director Tom Ross. "We are also excited to produce our third main stage production to originate as part of the GAP process, Anthony Clarvoe's Our Practical Heaven, which will be helmed by its GAP director, Allen McKelvey, and feature original GAP cast members Joy Carlin and Anne Darragh, as well as Julia Brothers, who will return from New York to appear in the project. It has been a thrill to watch Anthony's play blossom from a bare bones GAP reading and we look forward to seeing it come to fruition as part of our 21st season. Most importantly, our community continues to enthusiastically embrace the GAP with strong attendance and inspiring excitement; we look forward to another season of presenting new and exciting voices for the stage."

"Over the years the GAP has increased our awareness of the world we live in and how we write about it," states GAP Producer M. Graham Smith. "With each season, we see an expanding variety of voices and forms as playwrights stake out the parameters of what it means to live now."

Over the past seven years, the GAP has established a track record for nurturing new playwrights. During the first year, Dan Hoyle's early draft of Tings Dey Happen was a GAP prize-recipient and received its first public showing at Aurora Theatre Company; since then, the show has gone on to become a huge success in New York and San Francisco, where it won the Glickman Award. Laura Jacqmin, whose play Happyslap was a GAP prize-recipient during the festival's second year, won the Wasserstein Award for an outstanding script by a young woman who has not yet received national attention. Additionally, playwright Zayd Dohrn, whose play Sick was a 2008 GAP prize-recipient, garnered the first Sky Cooper New American Play Prize at Marin Theatre Company. Our Dad is in Atlantis by Javier Malpica, translated by Jorge Ingacio Cortiñas, was published in its entirety in American Theatre Magazine following its GAP reading in 2008.

Joel Drake Johnson's The First Grade originated as a GAP finalist and became the first Aurora main stage production to develop from the GAP. Allison Moore's Collapse, which originated as a GAP finalist, became the second main stage production to develop from the GAP; the play received its main stage debut as a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, a collaboration with Aurora Theatre Company (lead theater), Curious Theatre in Denver, and Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, during the 2010-11 season, and has gone on to be staged in four additional professional productions.

M. Graham Smith, Artistic Director of Precarious Theatre, returns to Aurora Theatre Company for a fourth season as GAP producer. He has directed at the Walnut Theater in Philadelphia and the HERE American Living Room series in New York City. In San Francisco, directing credits include productions at the Yerba Buena Garden's Festival, Bay Area Playwright's Festival, American Conservatory Theater's Masters program, EXIT Theatre, Asian American Theatre Company, Playground, BRAVA, Berkeley Playhouse, Golden Thread, and New Conservatory Theatre. Most recently he directed the West Coast Premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera in San Francisco for Ray of Light Theatre, as well as the opera Love/Hate with ODC and SF Opera. He will make his directing debut at Shotgun Players this summer with Ken Slattery's Truffaldino Says No.

Also returning is GAP Associate Producer Deborah Taylor. Recent producing credits include the Broadway productions of One Man Two Guvnors, The Mountaintop starring Samuel Jackson and Angela Bassett, American Idiot, and La Cage Aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammer. Additional producing credits include Killer Joe at Magic Theatre, NuWerks at Marin Theatre Company (Producing Director), and The Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles, where she started the Zephyr Reading Series and produced the West Coast Premieres ofAllison Moore's Slashed and The Last Schwartz by Deb Zoe Laufer. Taylorstarted FireMused Productions, a theater and film producing company with a primary focus on developing and producing new works. FireMused has participated in several New York (Broadway and Off-Broadway) productions, including Eve Ensler's The Good Body, Cultural Industry's Shockheaded Peter, as well as Chicago's White Noise, featuring Whoopi Goldberg, and STOMP/Las Vegas. Current Broadway projects include Marcus Gardley's Dance of the Holy Ghost, directed by Kenny Leon.

Aurora Theatre Company rounds out its 20th season in June with the World Premiere of SALOMANIA, written and directed by Mark Jackson. The company opens its 21st season in August with the coveted Bay Area Premiere of Kristoffer Diaz's Pulitzer-nominated powerslam of a play THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY, directed by Jon Tracy. Aurora Theatre Company founding Artistic Director Barbara Oliver returns to the company in November to direct WILDER TIMES, a collection of short plays by iconic American playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder, followed by the World Premiere of Anthony Clarvoe's OUR PRACTICAL HEAVEN in January, directed by Allen McKelvey. Award-winning Bay Area auteur Mark Jackson returns to Aurora Theatre Company in April to put his spin on Alistair Beaton's new translation of Max Frisch's West End hit THE ARSONISTS. The season concludes in June with the Bay Area Premiere of Neil LaBute's searing dark comedy THIS IS HOW IT GOES, directed by Aurora Theatre Company Artistic Director Tom Ross.

Nominated for 33 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards for 2011, Aurora Theatre Company continues to offer challenging, literate, intelligent stage works to the Bay Area, each year increasing its reputation for top-notch theater. Located in the heart of the Downtown Berkeley Arts District, Aurora Theatre Company, declared "one of the best regional theaters around" by 7x7 magazine, has been called "one of the most important regional theaters in the area" and "a must-see midsize company" by the San Francisco Chronicle, while The Wall Street Journal has "nothing but praise for the Aurora." The Contra Costa Times stated "perfection is probably an unattainable ideal in a medium as fluid as live performance, but the Aurora Theatre comes luminously close," while the San Jose Mercury News affirmed "[Aurora Theatre Company] lives up to its reputation as a theater that feeds the mind," and the Oakland Tribune stated "it's all about choices, and if you value good theater, choose the Aurora."

For tickets or more information about Aurora Theatre Company productions or the GAP, the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org.